In 1898, Spain declared war on the United States after rejecting America’s ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.

In 1915, the Ottoman Empire began the brutal mass deportation of Armenians during World War I.

In 1953, British statesman Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1968, leftist students at Columbia University in New York began a weeklong occupation of several campus buildings.

In 1970, the People’s Republic of China launched its first satellite, which kept transmitting a song, “The East is Red.”

In 1980, the United States launched an abortive attempt to free the American hostages in Iran, a mission that resulted in the deaths of eight U.S. servicemen.

In 1986, Wallis, the Duchess of Windsor, for whom King Edward VIII had given up the British throne, died in Paris at age 89.

Ten years ago: The prosecution and defense presented opening statements in the Oklahoma City bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh. The Senate voted 74-26 to approve the chemical weapons treaty, five days before the pact was to take effect. Comedian Pat Paulsen died in Mexico at age 69.

Five years ago: After an extraordinary meeting at the Vatican sparked by a sex abuse scandal, American Roman Catholic leaders agreed to make it easier to remove priests who were guilty of sexually abusing minors. Michael McDermott, a software engineer who’d claimed he was insane when he shot to death seven co-workers, was convicted of murder in Cambridge, Mass.

One year ago: Terrorist bombings killed at least 21 people at a beach resort on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Speaking in Irvine, Calif., President Bush said those calling for massive deportation of the estimated 11 million foreigners living illegally in the United States were not being realistic. Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum, the spiritual leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, died in New York at age 91.

Thought for Today: “The door to the past is a strange door. It swings open and things pass through it, but they pass in one direction only. No man can return across that threshold, though he can look down still and see the green light waver in the water weeds.” — Loren Eiseley, American anthropologist (1907-1977).